Climate Fiction

By: Jenna Totz, MAEE Board Member

At the beginning of the year, I made a resolution to read more books. However, I didn’t want to read just any type of book. I wanted those books to help me in my career. As the Education Manager at Climate Generation, I get to help students and teachers understand the science, impacts, and solutions to climate change. After a few searches on Goodreads, I decided to add some climate fiction, or cli-fi, to the list. Cli-fi is a relatively new genre and most books are written for young adult readers.

It’s only March, but I’ve already read three books that I have really loved. These books are quite different but could be read in a science or ELA classroom, a book club, or on a couch curled up after a long day at work. If you are looking for more cli-fi, check out this list from Goodreads.

Same Sun Here: This book shares the friendship of Meena and River — pen pals in Kentucky and New York City. The book is organized in letters that these best friends write to each other in 2008-2009. Good old fashioned snail mail. This book is extremely relevant right now. River describes the mountaintop removal near his house and the resulting impacts. Meena tells of class and race discrimination she and her family experiences.

Exodus: Set in 2100, Exodus tells the story of the island of Wing which is about to be flooded by rising seas. 15-year-old Mara, a native of the island, discovers the existence of New World sky cities that are safe from the storms they endure for months on end, and the rising seas. Mara convinces her people to travel to one of those cities only to be shut out completely by citizens of the New World.

Flight Behavior: This book takes the reader to the rural southeastern United States where a strange phenomenon has occurred making the Turnbow farm of national scientific interest.  Monarch butterflies turned off their migratory course for unknown reasons, have congregated in the woods above the farm and a research team of scientists set up a lab to discover clues that might tell them why.